Xerox Corporation

David R Karger

Jan O Pedersen

Douglass R Cutting

John W Tukey

Arbitrarily large document collections are processed by expanding a focus set having at least one initial metadocument into a plurality of subsequent metadocuments. The number of subsequent metadocuments is approximately equal to a predetermined maximum number. The subsequent metadocuments are then clustered into a predetermined number of new metadocuments, which are summarized and presented to a user. The focus set is redefined to include only user-selected new metadocuments.

Method of constant interaction-time clustering applied to document

Scatter-Gather is a computer based document browsing method which operates in time proportional to a number of documents in a target corpus. The Scatter-Gather method includes: preparing an initial ordering of the corpus using, for example, an off-line computational method; determining a summary of the initial ordering of the corpus for interactive utility; and providing a further ordering of the corpus using, for example, an on-line non-deterministic method. The step of an off-line preparation of an initial ordering of a corpus is non-time-dependent, thus an accurate initial ordering is prepared. The step of determining a summary includes determining a summary for presentation to a user without scrolling on a CRT. The step of providing a further ordering includes truncated group average agglomerate clustering, merging disjointed document sets, center finding, assign-to-nearest and other refinement methods.

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Stanford, CA, United States of America

David R Karger